Kurt Schwitters: Merz (2016) – Norman Rosenthal interviews Damien Hirst

One could make up a catechism of means of expression, were it not pointless, as pointless as
the intention of expressing a meaning through a work of art. Every line, colour, shape has its
distinct meaning. Every combination of lines, colours and shapes expresses a distinct meaning.
The meaning can only be expressed by this special combination, it cannot be translated. One
cannot render the meaning of a picture in words, just as one cannot paint the meaning of a word,
the word ‘and’, for example.
What a picture expresses is, however, so important that it is worth consistently striving for.
Every attempt to depict natural forms detracts from the power of consistency in working out the
expression. I rejected any reproduction of natural forms and painted only using pictorial forms.
These are my abstractions. I harmonised the components of a picture with one another, just as I
had done at art school, only not in the cause of reproducing nature, but in the cause of expression.
Now even the striving for expression in a work of art seems to me harmful to art. Art is a basic
concept, exalted as the deity, inexplicable as life, indefinable and purposeless. The work of art is
created by the artist’s devaluing of its components. I only know how I do it, I only know my material
on which I draw, I do not know for what purpose.
The material is as unimportant as I am. What matters is the shaping of it. Because the material
does not matter, I use anything to hand, if the picture requires it. As I can arrange different kinds
of material to go together, I have a distinct advantage over pure painting in oils: in addition to
juxtaposing colour with colour, line with line, form against form etc. I can also match material
against material, say wood against sacking. I call the philosophy that gave rise to this kind of
artistic creation “Merz”.
The word “Merz” had no meaning when I invented it. Now it has the meaning I have given it. The
meaning of the term “Merz” changes with the changing consciousness of those who continue to
work within the meaning of the term.
Merz demands freedom from any restriction for the process of artistic creation. Freedom is not
unbridled licence, but the outcome of a strict artistic discipline. Merz also implies tolerance
regarding any limitation on artistic grounds. An artist must be permitted to compose a picture
entirely out of pieces of blotting paper, as long as he has the power to create. To reproduce
natural elements is not important to a work of art. But representation of actual objects, inartistic
in themselves, can make part of a picture, when integrated with the other parts of it.
I have previously also gone in for other art forms, poetry, for instance. The basic ingredients of poetry
are letters, syllables, words, sentences. Evaluation of these ingredients against one another creates
poetry. The sense is only important where it is evaluated as one more factor.
I evaluate sense against nonsense. I prefer nonsense, but that is just a personal affair. I feel sorry for
nonsense, because hitherto it has hardly ever been artistically shaped, that is why I love nonsense.
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